Explaining Quantum Computing

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MIT's Scott Aaronson Explains Quantum Computing -- Forbes

MIT’s Scott Aaronson, who works with the physics of quantum computing and is a friend of the blog, has a really great, down-to-earth article on quantum computing in the New York Times that I highly recommend reading as a nice primer for what’s possible and what isn’t.

Probably most interesting to me – and I follow quantum computing a lot – is one of the more overlooked aspects of quantum computing, and that’s its application to physics and chemistry research. Here’s a brief snippet.

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CSN Editor: Scott Aaronson's must read New York Times article on quantum computing is here.

How Heels Damage The Body

Fashion's High Price: How Heels Damage The Body -- Live Science

The laundry list of damage that high heels can do to your body just got longer: According to podiatrists, high-heeled shoes are one of the most common causes of ingrown toenails.

This toenail problem, which occurs when the toes are compressed so that the big toenail grows into the skin, is usually nothing more than a painful annoyance. But ingrown toenails can become infected, sometimes necessitating the removal of the entire nail.

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Arctic Sea Ice Decline May Be Driving Snowy Winters Seen in Recent Years in N. Hemisphere

Unusual Weather: Arctic Sea Ice Decline May Be Driving Snowy Winters Seen in Recent Years in N. Hemisphere -- Science Daily

ScienceDaily (Feb. 27, 2012) — A new study led by the Georgia Institute of Technology provides further evidence of a relationship between melting ice in the Arctic regions and widespread cold outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere. The study's findings could be used to improve seasonal forecasting of snow and temperature anomalies across northern continents.

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Visual Comparison of Earthquake Strength

An Excellent Visual Comparison of Earthquake Strength -- The Atlantic

Think the 1994 Northridge quake was strong? How about Haiti's 2010 quake? This United States Geological Survey video by NOAA employee Nathan Becker puts the energy released by earthquakes over the last 50 years in startling perspective. While I know that the scale that we use to measure earthquakes is not linear, it is difficult to make my brain believe it until I see it laid out like this. Take a look for yourself, and give thanks that you weren't in Chile in 1960 when the strongest quake ever recorded struck.

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Android Takes The Fight To iPhone With Trio Of Next Generation Quad-Core Smartphones

Photo: Opposition: The iPhone 4S, which runs half the speed of the new Android offering

Android Takes The Fight To iPhone With Trio Of Next Generation Quad-Core Smartphones That Are TWICE As Fast - -Daily Mail

Android smartphones have taken the fight to Apple after launching the first quad-core handsets that work faster than iPhones.

HTC, LG and Huawei all showcased the new technology – which will be released later this year – at the Mobile World Congress fair in Barcelona.

The phones, which all use Android 4.0 operating systems, should work twice as fast as the iPhone 4S, which uses a dual-core A5 processor.

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Snowfall In Baghdad 1,000 Years Ago, And Again In 2008

Ice one: Snow fell on Baghdad in 2008 for the first time in memory

The Ancient Arabic Writings That Reveal Desert City Of Baghdad Was FROZEN Over 1,000 Years Ago In New Clue Over Climate Change -- Daily Mail

* It snowed three times between 908 and 1007 - but not again until 2008

Temperatures in Baghdad range from around 2C in winter to 45C in the summer – but ancient Arabic writings have revealed that the city experienced a dramatic frozen period around 1,000 years ago.

Spanish researchers from the University of Extremadura found 9th and 10th century (3rd and 4th in the Islamic calendar) sources that refer to snowfalls in the Iraqi capital in 908, 944 and 1007 and even rivers being frozen.

These are extreme events for Baghdad - for example, the only snowfall in the modern era took place in 2008 - and help meteorologists better understand today's climate.

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Trillion-Frame-Per-Second Video

Media Lab postdoc Andreas Velten, left, and Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar with the experimental setup they used to produce slow-motion video of light scattering through a plastic bottle. Photo: M. Scott Brauer

Trillion-Frame-Per-Second Video -- Physorg.com

By using optical equipment in a totally unexpected way, MIT researchers have created an imaging system that makes light look slow.

MIT researchers have created a new imaging system that can acquire visual data at a rate of one trillion exposures per second. That’s fast enough to produce a slow-motion video of a burst of light traveling the length of a one-liter bottle, bouncing off the cap and reflecting back to the bottle’s bottom.

Media Lab postdoc Andreas Velten, one of the system’s developers, calls it the “ultimate” in slow motion: “There’s nothing in the universe that looks fast to this camera,” he says.

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Five Predictions From IBM

IBM's Five Predictions For The Next Five Years -- Bloomberg

Biometric passwords? Mind-reading headsets? Junk mail you'll look forward to? As with all predictions, the answer is "maybe".

In each of the past five years, IBM has come up with a list of five innovations it believes will become popular within five years. In this, the sixth year, IBM has come up with the following technologies it thinks will gain traction. Hold on to your sci-fi novels, because some of these are pretty far out there. And some of them, well, I wish we had them today.

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Cartoon Pic For Today

Pick The Stradivarius Violin

Stradivarius Violin. Photo: Wikimedia.org.

Double-Blind Violin Test: Can You Pick The Strad? -- NPR

In the world of violins, the names Stradivari and Guarneri are sacred. For three centuries, violin-makers and scientists have studied the instruments made by these Italian craftsmen. So far no one has figured out what makes their sound different. But a new study now suggests maybe they aren't so different after all.

OK, here's a test. Clip one is a musical phrase from Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major. Clip two is the same phrase. The same musician plays both. But one is on a Stradivarius violin, the other on a violin made in 1980. See if you can tell the difference.

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My Comment: I choose the wrong one .... hmmmm .... and I use to be a professional musician.

100,000 Times More ‘Nomad Planets’ Than Stars?

An artistic rendition of a nomad object wandering the interstellar medium (intentionally blurry to represent uncertainty about whether it has an atmosphere). A nomadic object may be an icy body akin to an object found in the outer solar system, a more rocky material akin to asteroid, or even a gas giant similar in composition to the most massive solar system planets and exoplanets. (Credit: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

Galaxy May Swarm With 100,000 Times More ‘Nomad Planets’ Than Stars -- Kurzweil

There may be 100,000 times more wandering “nomad planets” in the Milky Way than stars, and some may carry bacterial life, according to a new study by researchers at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC).

If any of these nomad planets are big enough to have a thick atmosphere, they could have trapped enough heat for bacterial life to exist,” said Louis Strigari, leader of the team that reported the result in a paper submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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100 Billion Stars In The Milky Way

An Otherworldly Discovery: Billions of Other Planets -- Wall Street Journal

Astronomers said Wednesday that each of the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way probably has at least one companion planet, on average, adding credence to the notion that planets are as common in the cosmos as grains of sand on the beach.

The finding underscores a fundamental shift in scientific understanding of planetary systems in the cosmos. Our own solar system, considered unique not so long ago, turns out to be just one among billions.

Until April 1994, there was no other known solar system, but the discoveries have slowly mounted since then: The Kepler space telescope, designed for planet-hunting, now finds them routinely.

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My Comment: And how many planets?

Is Google 'Dumping' Search

Why Google Is Ditching Search -- CNET

There has been a huge maelstrom about Google integrating Google+ into its search links. And it all misses the point.

Twitter and others are complaining that Google is throwing its massive 65 percent plus market share weight around and quashing smaller competitors. The reason Twitter and others are so threatened is that the pattern of shared links within Google+ provides a decent enough indicator as to what links are interesting. What's important is what's trending, and algorithms can get a sense of that with just a subset of everything that's getting shared on the Web.

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My Comment: That's what I like about Google .... always trying to stay one step ahead.

The Rise And Fall Of Personal Computing

The Rise And Fall Of Personal Computing -- Asymco

Thanks to Jeremy Reimer I was able to create the following view into the history of computer platforms.

I added data from the smartphone industry, Apple and updated the PC industry figures with those from Gartner. Note the log scale.

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My Comment: I love the graphs that he posted.

A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors

The World Belongs To Apps

How Apps Have Taken Over The World -- The Guardian

Steve Jobs initially resisted apps, fearing sabotage. But when the late Apple chief relented in 2007, the floodgates opened

A ticker on the front of Apple's website rolls over relentlessly, increasing by about 500 a second as it moves relentlessly towards 25bn.

It is counting the number of units of application software downloaded from the company's App Store – and the rise of a business that barely existed five years ago, but which now dominates daily conversation so much that the phrase, "There's an app for that", has become both an offer of help and a joke.

The counter is expected to hit the target by early March. By then, users will have spent about £3.6bn buying apps through the store, of which Apple will have passed on £2.5bn and retained £1.1bn.

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My Comment: And this is all just starting.

Apple Buys Chomp

Apple Said To Pay About $50 Million For Application-Search Startup Chomp -- Bloomberg

Apple Inc. (AAPL), the world’s most valuable company, acquired San Francisco-based Chomp Inc., which helps users sort through the widening array of software applications for mobile devices.

The Cupertino, California-based company paid about $50 million for Chomp, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the specifics are private. Apple confirmed the deal yesterday, without disclosing the purchase price.

“We buy smaller technology companies from time to time and generally don’t comment on our purposes or plans,” said Amy Bessette, a spokeswoman for Apple.

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My Comment: It's about time.

Is This The Future of Touchscreen Tech?

Is This The Future of Touchscreen Tech? New Video Will Blow Your Mind -- Mashable Tech

Gorilla Glass manufacturer Corning has unveiled a follow-up YouTube video to its wildly successful “A Day Made of Glass,” providing another look into what the future could be like with the growth of glass touchscreen interfaces, from innovative chalkboards and activity tables in classrooms to uses for it in hospitals.

Corning released two versions of “A Day Made of Glass 2″ — one with a narrator and another, abbreviated version without commentary — the video follows the life of young Amy and her family as they go through their day using various products made of glass. Amy does classwork on a glass tablet, controls the temperature of the car from the backseat and even attends a field trip at the Redwood Forrest with an interactive signage that brings learning to life. Her teacher also works with students on interactive touchscreen activity tables. Corning expects these activity tables to be rolled out in the near future.

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My Comment: Impressive.

Were Neutrinos Faster-Than-Light .... Or Not?

'Faster-Than-Light' Particles May Have Been Even Speedier -- CBC

Subatomic particles clocked at speeds exceeding the speed of light may have been going even faster than they appeared, physicists say.

A problem with some of the equipment used in the original experiment may have led to an overestimate of the time it took the particles, known as neutrinos, to make their 730-kilometre journey, reported CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in a statement Thursday.

As a result, their speed may have been underestimated.

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Update: Two Technical Problems Leave Neutrinos’ Speed in Question -- New York Times

CSN Editor: We will know the real answer in the next few months when more tests are done.

De-Classified UK Submarine Data Will Be Used To Assist Climate Science

Environmental data is routinely collected by submarines and other Navy vessels

UK Submarine Data De-Classified To Aid Climate Science -- BBC

The UK Ministry of Defence is to de-classify submarine data to help shed light on climate change in the Arctic.

Environmental data are routinely monitored by Navy vessels, but the measurements are highly sensitive because they could give away positions.

A dataset from one submarine mission will be released to give a snapshot of conditions under the ice.

It is hoped that further data could be released in future, yielding clues to how the Arctic is changing.

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